Your furniture or your dream house?

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Old Couch

Old Couch

The favorite couch, sofa, kitchen table, or easy chair. You know… the one that creeks when you sit down, has a slight nacho cheese smell, and really needs a good clean. We all have one and it’s emotional value far outweighs its resale value. To understand real estate you have to understand people’s emotions. Furniture can have more meaning than the wood frame and padding. These items store memories of rocking a first child to sleep, watching the big game with dad, the peace after a long day of work, and on and on and on.

To Mr. and Mrs. Buyer… I understand your emotional stranglehold on your furniture but your continual insistence on every piece fitting perfectly is severely undermining your ability to get that dream home. Look at the beauty in the picture I gave up for my new home.  How many times have we walked into a house with dropped jaws only to leave with dismay and sadness because your 15 year old love seat wouldn’t fit correctly in the living room? I know you love it but didn’t you also love that house? Are you willing to settle on an average house to keep that love seat for a couple more years. The love seat may be at the dump by Christmas but the home you buy will remain the same.

I plead with you to look beyond your present situation and view the memories that can be made in this home. At some point you need to let go. At some point new memories need to be made.

Ricky Beach
Managing Broker/Realtor
Renown Real Estate Services
(775) 750-1437
Ricky@Resnv.com
www.RenownHomes.com

Weekly Reno/Sparks Real Estate Video Tour-10224 Via Bianca in Arrowcreek

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From the Renown Real Estate Video Library, Ricky Beach presents his video tour of 10224 Via Bianca in south Reno. Our library contains our weekly video tours of homes for sale in Reno and Sparks, Nevada, informational videos about the Reno and Sparks real estate market, how to buy and sell a home, home trends, mortgage financing, and the general happenings in our area. Feel free to check back weekly to stay up to date in Reno and Sparks. Click for more Reno Real Estate Videos.

This property is a 5 bed, 5 bath, with over 4,000 sqft. of living area. The backyard and balconies offer mountain, city, and valley views. Truly a piece of resort living within 15 minutes of downtown Reno and 35 minutes of Lake Tahoe and ski resorts. With a list price per sqft. of $120 this property is a great deal for the private golf community of Arrowcreek.

Is the new HAFA the golden ticket?

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By February 1, 2011 servicers, other than Fannie and Freddie, must make changes to their HAFA policies in order to be compliant with the Making Home Affordable Program. Through September 2010 only 342 HAFA short sales were completed and closed. Pretty pathetic for something with so much hoopla from big brother. With poor results in the past, the program has been revamped to open it’s eligibility to more borrowers and potentially improve the market. The Supplemental Directive 10-18 can be found here but for most a quick summary below might suffice.

Monthly Gross Income

Servicers are no longer required to verify the monthly mortgage amount exceeding 31% but may with their own policies. The hardship affidavit still applies.

Vacant Property

The property still must be or recently have been the borrower’s principal residence but now it can be vacant or rented to a non-borrower for less than 12 months from the date of the Short Sale Agreement. Relocation stipulations have been removed.

Release of Subordinate Liens

The 6% cap on junior lien holders has been removed and replaced with a cap of $6,000. Investors will still be eligible for incentive reimbursement up to 1/3 of the cost to remove subordinate liens.

Issuance of Short Sale Agreement

Within 30 days of the servicer offering HAFA, the servicer must complete and send the Short Sale Agreement. If the borrower requests HAFA the servicer must respond within 30 days.

Response to Alternative Request for Approval of Short Sale

The servicer has 30 days from the receipt of an executed sales contract to approve, reject, or counter with the AltRASS form.

Commissions

Listing commissions shall be paid to what the listing agreement says, not to exceed 6%. Third party negotiators, contractors, etc. shall not be paid from this commission.

Deed-in-Lieu

D-I-L’s like deed-for-lease are qualified for HAFA relocation incentives.

Borrower Notices

Borrower’s may be notified of HAMP and HAFA eligibility simultaneously. This means no waiting through HAMP then waiting through HAFA back-to-back.

Retroactivity

Borrowers can be re-evaluated for HAFA eligibility even if they have been denied, per the servicers re-evaluation policy.

Everything sounds nice but are servicers really going to quit doing the 31% debt to income if they don’t have to? Will these timelines actually be followed and if not is there any type of punishment?

Golden Ticket, no. A step in the right direction, yes.

Reno/Sparks Real Estate Market Update-1/14/2011

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Welcome to the Renown Real Estate Video Library. Managing Broker and Realtor Ricky Beach presents this video of Reno and Sparks real estate market conditions, mortgage rates, local happenings, and general musings for the Reno and Sparks, NV area. Check back each week to see what’s new for home sales in Reno and Sparks, NV. Click for more Reno Real Estate Videos.

Sorry folks no video for today but all the information will be provided through text.

30 year mortgage rates fell again from the week. Freddie Mac reports that a 30 year loan with .8 of a point is rated at 4.71%. This is down from 4.77% last week and hits a four week low. We view this as a good week but a recent survey, from bankrate.com, of a panel of mortgage experts shows that most agree that rates won’t fall in the immediate futre. We’ll see if that’s true or not.

The Reno/Sparks market saw 99 sales from January 7th to January 13th. The average list price for these sales was $197,165 and the average sold price was $188,244 giving a sale to list price ratio of 95%, which has been around the average for the preceding year. Of those 99 sales 45% were bank or corporate owned, 35% were short sales, and 20% were fair market owner resale. 80% of sales being distressed properties is pretty high for the area but doesn’t seem too alarming.

For the Nevada foreclosure market, in December notice of default filings were down 2.3% which may be attributed to lenders freezing foreclosure due to the holidays. Foreclosure sales were up 24.3% and cancellations rose 39.8%.

One bright spot of the foreclosure market is that banks may be coming around to partial rehabs on their assets. Field Asset Services tracked 17,252 properties and found that the average days on market varied greatly for trash out only REOs and rehabbed REOs. The trash out only REOs averaged 22.8 days on the market while the rehabbed ones average only 69.8 days. While there are many other factors in the sale of REO properties I believe poor condition has been the biggest hold up in the market. Our area is first time home buyer driven with most of these buyers not having enough funds, after closing costs, to cosmetically repair a property. New carpet, paint, and updated fixtures can go a long with with appeasing buyers and most properties will keep or gain more than 100% return on those repairs. Think multiple offer situations.

Check back next week for more updates and we should have our video service back up and running.

Weekly Reno/Sparks Real Estate Tour-3584 Desert Fox

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From the Renown Real Estate Video Library, Ricky Beach presents his video tour of 3584 Desert Fox Drive Sparks, NV 89436. Our library contains our weekly video tours of homes for sale in Reno and Sparks, Nevada, informational videos about the Reno and Sparks real estate market, how to buy and sell a home, home trends, mortgage financing, and the general happenings in our area. Feel free to check back weekly to stay up to date in Reno and Sparks. Click for more Reno Real Estate Videos.